by Angela Foxxe
Alexa wanted to give the male a sharp retort. It was lingering on the tip of her tongue, telling the male that he was wrong. Maybe she would goad him into attacking. Maybe she would call him the coward, for being all bark and no bite. However, Alexa held her tongue. What he said was true. She was weak and afraid.
A little part of her was determined to change that. She would show her mother that she had messed with the wrong wolf. She would prove to Noemi that she could be of some help to her.
*
The next morning, Alexa woke to the sound of snarling in her ear. She sat bolt upright and tried to jump away from the snarling, finding in her panic that the snarling was coming from Noemi. The alpha had her head lowered and her tail raised, and each of her hairs was standing on end. Across from her was the alpha who had mocked Alexa the night before. He was in the same stance, each waiting for the other to make the first move. Alexa wouldn’t let Noemi murder another wolf, or she would seal her fate even faster.
Alexa wrapped her arms around Noemi’s chest and pulled the she-wolf back. As soon as her front paws left the ground, Noemi wriggled out of Alexa’s grip and cut her aggressive stance. The male alpha did the same and backed away a few steps. Noemi, angry that she had been interrupted, turned around and gave Alexa a snarl.
Alexa diverted her eyes from Noemi. “I’m sorry, Noemi, but you can’t fight anymore,” she said. “They told me last night that because you killed someone, you’re in more trouble than I am.”
Noemi hesitated at Alexa’s words, and then shifted into a human. Her dirty fur pulled back into skin, and her features slimmed down. In just a few moments—which was still longer than it normally should have taken—a human was seated in front of Alexa rather than a snarling she-wolf.
“I know that,” Noemi said, holding her chin high. “If I hadn’t known the consequences, then I wouldn’t have gone forward with what I did. I was saving my life.”
“You know that doesn’t matter to them,” Alexa scoffed. “They don’t care what we do and why we do it, they just want to make sure that we’re the ones who pay at the end of the day.”
“It’s the life that we’ve been raised in,” Noemi said. “If you weren’t prepared for the consequences, then you shouldn’t have gone through with it. I could’ve escaped by myself, and I probably would’ve gotten farther than I did with you tagging along.”
A knife of guilt pierced Alexa’s heart as she listened to Noemi’s berating words. “Then why did you bother to take me along in the first place?” Alexa snapped.
“Isn’t it obvious?” Noemi asked, raising an eyebrow at Alexa. “I care about you, Alexa. I want to see you happy. I want to start my own pack; I told you that. Don’t tell me that you forgot about it in such a short time.”
“No,” Alexa muttered. “But I’m not like you, Noemi. I can’t do the things that you do.”
Alexa’s words had Noemi scooting forward, the alpha sitting mere inches from her. Noemi reached out and put a hand on Alexa’s shoulder. She gave a reassuring squeeze, and it brought Alexa back to the time when she and Noemi had first begun plotting together.
“Yes you can, Alexa,” she said. “When you say those things, you’ll never be brave. You’ll never be strong if you keep telling yourself that it is impossible. I want you to keep your chin up. We are going to get through this.”
“You didn’t seem so certain about that last night,” Alexa said.
“I was tired and I’d just been through five fights. I wasn’t ready to admit that I would fight to the death to get out of this damned place,” Noemi replied.
“You two,” one of the alphas snapped. He clicked his fingers at them, and motioned for them to get up. “You’re being given the grace of food. You’d better appreciate it, because you might not be getting more. We had a hard enough time taking this one down.”
“That’s because I’m not there to help you,” Noemi scoffed. She hefted herself to her feet, and then offered her hand to Alexa. Noemi was wearing a confident smirk as she tilted her head at the male alpha. “Don’t you know that I’m the best hunter in this entire pack?” she teased.
“You broke the law,” he replied, his face stony and cold. “We can’t let you hunt otherwise you might turn on us or run away. Then we would have to give up food to chase you down and bring you back.”
“Why don’t you just let us go?” Alexa asked. “I know that it’s a law and it’s all about traditions, but what harm can we do? We’re going to leave and we are never going to come back. We can’t hurt you once we’ve crossed the border into the free lands.”
“We can’t let that happen,” the male alpha said. He clicked his fingers again, and jerked his head at Noemi and Alexa. “Now, hurry it up. You only have so much time.”
Noemi was the first to follow after the male, Alexa hesitating behind the two of them. She was rushed into motion as the alpha that was still in wolf form snapped at her heels. At a slow pace, only urged on by the alpha when she fell too far behind, Alexa watched as Noemi discussed with the alpha in front of her. Alexa knew that if Noemi was convincing enough, she could earn her rank again. Noemi was an alpha and incredibly revered by the pack. Even if she had broken the law, she was vital. Her hunting skills, her strength, and her ingenuity were all infallible and priceless.
“Alexa!” came a little squeal.
Alexa glanced over, just in time to see Dixie running up to her. She had Jean’s hand in hers, and their eyes were wide with worry.
“What’s happening?” Jean asked.
As the two of them approached, the alpha behind Alexa snarled and raised his tail at the twins. The two of them, blind to their alpha’s signal, approached anyway.
“Stay back,” Alexa ordered, holding her hands up to try and ward the twins off.
“Why?” Jean asked, looking over his sister. “You’re our sister. We want to see you.”
“We were so worried about you,” Dixie said. “Mom left last night, too, and so did a lot of other adults. We were alone for a long time. Are you in trouble?” she asked.
“I’m in a lot of trouble,” Alexa replied, glancing between her younger siblings and the alpha. He had his hackles raised, but pups were immune to any sort of signals that were given to them. “So you need to go away now, because no one can see me. That’s how much trouble I’m in.”
“Why are you in trouble?” Dixie asked.
The little pup took one step forward, and the alpha lunged forward in a flash of pearly fangs that were dripping with saliva. Alexa barely registered what happened, but Dixie’s scream of fear and pain jolted her into motion. Faster than she had ever shifted in her life, Alexa turned into the mottled white wolf inside of her, bristling with white hot rage.
Alexa tackled the male with a fearsome snarl, and sent him scrambling backwards. The last thing he had been expecting was an attack from a lower-ranking wolf. While he backed off, Alexa hovered over the twins, tail held up and as straight as a flagpole. The male was giving her a look that could kill, but the wolf inside of Alexa refused to back down. She wanted to kill the male for threatening the pups. They were not her own pups, but she had raised them from birth and they were as good as her own in the wolf’s mind.
Dixie was on the ground, holding onto her arm that was bleeding profusely. Both twins were wailing and sobbing, but Alexa wouldn’t turn her attention from the threat in front of her. She flattened her ears against her skull and pulled back her lips.
With the racket that Dixie was making, it wasn’t long before other wolves had begun to gather. Sabrina, more in tune with her pup’s cry than anything else, was at Dixie’s side in a moment, trying to pry the little girl’s hand off of her wound to properly see it.
“Alexa!” Noemi shouted, seeming to appear out of nothing as she ran back to the scene. The alpha that she had been with was hot on her heels, the both of them screeching to a halt at the scene in front of them.
Noemi was almost proud of Alexa, feeling a little swell of the emot
ion in her chest. Alexa looked every inch like an alpha as she snarled at the male, refusing to give even an inch of ground as the male approached. She wasn’t certain what had happened, but she knew it had to have been something major to prompt Alexa into such an aggressive state.
The twins were cleared out by Sabrina, who rushed Dixie back to the den. She held the pup by the scruff of her neck as she ran, trying not to jostle her wounded foreleg too much. Noemi pressed forward once the pups were gone, hoping that Alexa had enough sense not to round on her and bite her. Noemi wouldn’t blame her if she did. There was no human left in Alexa, pure wolf and lupine instincts.
“Alexa,” she murmured, stepping forward at a slow pace. The she-wolf’s ears flicked, but that was Noemi’s only sign of recognition. “Alexa, calm down. I know what he did was bad, but you don’t want to be in more trouble than we already are.”
Noemi kneeled next to Alexa, and reached out at a snail’s pace. The she-wolf’s bright eyes were flickering between the two alphas, deciding which was her greatest threat. With her wolf in complete and utter control, the beast lashed out at Noemi.
A collective gasp when through the on looking crowd of pack members as Alexa’s head whipped around and she sank her fangs into Noemi’s arm. Noemi winced and sucked in a sharp breath through her teeth, but she didn’t give any other sign that she was in pain. Rather, she stared intently into Alexa’s eyes, willing the lower ranked wolf into submission.
“Let go of me,” Noemi growled. “I’m trying to help you. You’re only making the situation worse.”
Noemi could feel her own wolf stirring deep within herself, fighting to break free and eliminate the threat that was in front of her. It didn’t matter to the animal that Noemi was friends with Alexa, no wolf dared to bite an alpha.
“If you don’t let go of me,” Noemi threatened, curling her lip, “it will end badly for you.” Her tone was gravelly, her wolf howling to come through and take over the situation for her. The creature was showing itself in her pointed ears, the tips of fur at her joints, and the way her eyes flashed a bright golden yellow.
Growling fiercely still, Alexa pried her teeth from the muscle and skin of Noemi’s arm. The alpha she-wolf let out a shaky breath at the feeling, trying her hardest to control the urge to throttle Alexa where she stood. Alexa, finally realizing what she had done, dipped her long tongue out of her mouth and made a few passes with it over the injury. She lapped up the blood with her rough tongue, continuing to lick at Noemi’s arm until the bleeding finally came to an end.
Noemi breathed out steadily, regaining herself. She wouldn’t allow her wolf to take over in a blind rage as Alexa’s had done. As an alpha, her wolf was ten times stronger than any regular wolf, and she had trained for far too long and had put far too much effort into controlling the beast.
“It’s okay now,” Noemi said, watching as the flecks of lupine color in Alexa’s eyes returned to her normal shade of sky blue. “Don’t do it again, or you might do some real damage.”
Alexa dipped her head, guilt coursing through her body. She shifted back into a human, reaching out with worried hands to take Noemi’s arm and look over the damage. Her fangs had left huge puncture wounds, and she glanced up at Noemi.
“I hurt you,” she said.
“I know that you hurt me,” Noemi said. “That much is obvious. But it’s nothing that I haven’t experienced before. I just didn’t see it coming from someone like you.”
“I don’t know what happened,” Alexa muttered. At least Noemi’s arm had stopped bleeding by then, her shifter blood taking over and sealing up the injuries. “I heard Dixie screaming and I couldn’t help myself. Everything went red. I didn’t even know who you were.”
“It happens to the best of us,” Noemi said. She carded her fingers through Alexa’s matted and dirty hair, trying to calm her. “Just keep your wolf in check and it won’t happen again. You can learn to control it if you ever need to draw upon that strength.”
Alexa dared to glance up at Noemi, feeling her stomach tighten into a knot. “I don’t ever want that power again,” she whispered.
“You’re going to need it if we’re going to get out of this,” Noemi replied, firm with her words. “I knew that you could be brave, Alexa. You just had to believe in yourself.”
*
“I demand to know what that was,” Sabrina snarled. She had returned to Alexa and Noemi—forbidden from their only meal—after Dixie and Jean had been tended to. She was standing over the two of them, with Alexa refusing to meet her eyes. Noemi, with a hardened glare, stared up at the she-wolf who had given them away and crushed their chance at freedom.
Noemi wasn’t speaking. Alexa didn’t know why, but it made her tremble where she sat. Normally, Noemi would be the one sticking her neck out for Alexa. She risked life and limb at every chance that she could. Alexa was mostly surprised, though, that Noemi was taking such a condescending tone from a lower ranked wolf.
“Well?” Sabrina asked, raising her eyebrows. Her hands were on her hips as she looked down at the two of them. “Tell me what it was that happened. Why was Dixie bitten?”
“The alpha did it,” Alexa said. She risked a glance at her mother, and the harsh glare she was given made her glance away once more. “Dixie was trying to talk to me.”
“Why was she trying to talk to you?” Sabrina asked, horrified that the pup had been anywhere near Alexa in the first place. “She doesn’t have any reason to talk to you. I told her that you were dead.”
“You really think that Dixie would believe something like that?” Alexa asked. “You told them that I was dead? Why would you tell them that?” she gaped.
“Because you’re as good as dead,” Sabrina replied. She moved her hands from her hips and crossed her arms over her chest. “There wasn’t any point to get their hopes up. Do you know how hard it will be for them to cope with this?”
“That isn’t my fault,” Alexa muttered.
“No, Alexa,” Sabrina growled. “It is your fault. I’m sick of this attitude that you have, thinking that none of your actions have consequences. Everything that you do will affect you in some way, you’ve got to realize that sooner or later. If it takes your death and your friend’s death and that male’s death, then so be it.”
“There’s no need for this!” Alexa snapped. Alexa’s eyes darted over to Noemi, hoping that the she-wolf would offer her some sort of help. Noemi seemed content with staying completely silent. “We tried to tell the alphas if you would just let us go, then nothing bad will happen.”
“That’s not how it works, Alexa,” Sabrina said. Her tone had turned to ice as she stared down at her daughter. “You don’t understand. How could you? If we let someone get away with breaking the laws, then many others will follow suit. We can’t have an uprising or a fleeing of every wolf in the packs.”
“Living here is cruel!” Alexa objected.
“You know nothing about cruelty, Alexa,” Sabrina said. She paced back and forth in front of the two outlaws, worrying her lower lip between her teeth. “You’ve never lived outside of the pack grounds. You don’t know what it’s like to go hungry.” Sabrina faded off for a few moments, her eyes going somewhere far away. It wasn’t until what felt like hours later that Sabrina returned to them.
Her eyes were hard as she turned them upon her daughter, and the look made Alexa flinch away. She had never been looked at like that in her life. Even when she had been in trouble as a pup, she had never been afraid of her mother. Alexa hadn’t even known that her mother had the power to be as frightening as she was. She was looming over her and Noemi, the angles of her face sharper and harsher. Her wolf was coming through, threatening to take over at any moment.
“I want you to imagine it, Alexa,” Sabrina ordered, each word punctuated and harsh. They were like rocks thrown at Alexa, hitting her skin with such force that she was certain that she would bruise. “It’s cold; snow is falling down so heavily that you can’t see in front of you. There
is a male ahead of you who promised that he would love you forever. The two of you haven’t found food in weeks and you’re running on fumes at this point.”
Alexa’s breath caught in her throat as she watched her mother’s expression like a hawk. This was a story that she was unfamiliar with. Next to her, Noemi—who had seemed so disinterested at first—turned her head toward the conversation.
“You aren’t sure that you’ll ever eat again. The hunger is so painful that it’s all you can think about. You would gladly eat anything that you can get your paws on, but there’s nothing to get your paws on,” Sabrina continued, her hands going to her hips. “You know that you can turn back while there’s still time, and you do. You leave him behind because he was an idiot. You were an idiot. You allowed yourself to be tricked, and because you broke the law, you lost your alpha status and were demoted to a no-rank. You’re lucky that you were able to get away with law-breaking at all.”
“What’s this story?” Alexa asked, furrowing her eyebrows at Sabrina. “Are you just making this up?”
“Why would I ever make up something like this, Alexa?” Sabrina asked. She looked over the two she-wolves, and curled her nose at them. “You do realize that I’m offering you a chance, don’t you?” she asked.
“What chance?” Noemi piped up. It was the first time she had spoken up the entire time that Sabrina had been speaking to them. “The chance to sacrifice everything just so that we can live?”
“Exactly,” Sabrina said, looking over her daughter and Noemi. “I was given the same chance. If you renounce your title, Noemi, and all privileges that come with it, you will be granted your life.”
“What about me?” Alexa asked.
“There’s nothing left for you to lose,” Sabrina scoffed. “You have nothing to offer the pack and no title to renounce. You cannot hope to get out of this without some sort of punishment. Not after what you’ve done.”